Bru'n Water - mash and sparge water Total Water Additions

[chastuck]

I've been trying to get to grips with Bru'n Water and how to use the Total Water Additions. At the moment I am using Murphy's recommendations based on a water test they did for me and utilising AMS and DWB (aka CRS & DLS). In Murphy's way, you treat all the water to be used for liquor with AMS and then add the dry DWB to the mash grains before running the treated liquor from the HLT onto the mash. So there is only one batch of water as it were, with the remaining liquor left in the HLT being used for sparging.

Bru'n Water treats mash water and sparge water separately as two different entities. How do users of Bru'n Water interpret this? Does it mean you must have two separate HLTs - one for the sparge water and one for the mash water? Be grateful for any suggestions on this.

 

[pittsy]

Hi , yes with brun i have 2 waters , mash plus sparge this is because the mash water will change ph due to the grains that are used like if i was brewing a light ale the grains will only lower the ph a little while a dark beer will lower the mash ph more . The sparge water however will not have the same effect with the grains as they have finished mashing and converting so no effect on the water ph due to grains therefore most of your treatment is in the sparge water. Does that help.

 

[chastuck]

Hi , yes with brun i have 2 waters , mash plus sparge this is because the mash water will change ph due to the grains that are used like if i was brewing a light ale the grains will only lower the ph a little while a dark beer will lower the mash ph more . The sparge water however will not have the same effect with the grains as they have finished mashing and converting so no effect on the water ph due to grains therefore most of your treatment is in the sparge water. Does that help.

Many thanks. I have two converted baby Burcos that I use as HLTs - usually one at a time! I guess I can run the two in parallel with separate temp control to keep two separate waters.

 

[mabrungard]

The water quality needs of mashing and sparging water can be quite different. If you were brewing a light lager, then maybe the water qualities would be similar. But for many other styles, the water qualities can be different (its just the alkalinity that differs). Therefore, treating all water used in brewing to some fixed alkalinity level is not appropriate.

In general, all sparging water should have low alkalinity. I expect that the Murphy's recommendations do provide that. However since some mash grists can be more acidic than others, a little more alkalinity MIGHT be desirable in the mashing water to help avoid an overly low mash pH. So brewers should treat their mashing and sparging waters slightly differently depending on the needs of the mash. If a brewer has an alkaline tap water, they may not need to acidify the mashing water to the same degree as the sparging water for all brews.

Murphy's recommendations for acidification are safe since having low pH is better than having high pH in brewing, but that might not produce the best beer. Given that the ionic profile of the brewing water should differ between some beer styles, giving a blanket recommendation for brewing water adjustment is not really feasible or appropriate. Before the application of tools like Bru'n Water, it wasn't really feasible to know how much to vary your water treatments. Now water treatment is more practical to the layman.

 

[anthonyUK]

Historically, would the mash water have been treated separately from the sparge water or is it treated differently today in breweries?

 

[pittsy]

Back in the day they didn't know much about treating water other than boiling the mash water first which would get rid of some of the calcium and such like by skimming the scum off the top of the water (think kettle scale) That is why only certain areas brewed certain types of beer (or at least continued brewing certain types) like Bavarian brewers tried many times for years to brew plisners but no success (water too hard etc) .

 

[brewtim]

Depending on the style of beer, Murphy's recommendation for my water is AMS (Brupak CRS) or Lactic Acid treatment for the whole of the liquor and a DWB (Brupak DLS) or Calcium Chloride Flake and/or salt addition to the mash.

So in effect all the chemical additions end up in the mash with an extra addition of AMS (CRS) or Lactic Acid when the liquor is used for sparging, I think the Mash additions are separate because they are difficult to dissolve in the liquor water (not sure about this last point).

:wha: